Eduard Bagritsky (Dzyubin) - biography

Eduard Bagritsky (Russian: Эдуард Георгиевич Багрицкий), real name Dzyubin (Russian: Дзю́бин) (November 3 [O.S. October 22] 1895 Odessa - February 16, 1934, Moscow), was an important Russian and Soviet poet of the Constructivist School. He was a Neo-Romantic early in his poetic career; he was also a part of the so-called Odessa School of Russian writers (which also included Isaak Babel, Yuri Olesha, Valentin Katayev, Vera Inber, Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov, among others). A large number of this school's writers were Odessa natives who often incorporated Ukrainian inflections and vocabulary into their writing.

Bagritsky was a native of Odessa, but most of his creative career took place in Moscow. After his early death from asthma, his friends helped to publish several of his works posthumously to provide financial assistance to his family. Isaac Babel, for example, planned to write a screenplay based on Bagritsky's long poem "Duma about Opanas" (the script was never finished and was eventually lost).

Bagritsky was heavily influenced by the Russian Revolution and Civil War. His poetry often touches on the subjects of violence, revolutionary morality, sexuality and its interethnic sociological problems. His worldview was extremely unsentimental, and earned him much invective from detractors from all sides who saw his poetry as vindictive toward both his Jewish origins and the host Russian culture.

His wife, Lidia Gustavovna Suok (of Swedish descent), had two sisters who also married noted writers: Olga married Yuri Olesha and Serafima married Vladimir Narbut. Bagritsky's son Vsevolod (killed early in World War II) was also a notable Russian poet, whose wife Yelena Bonner (eventually the wife of Andrei Sakharov) later was a notable Russian dissident.